Kill the Sun

"How is this going to work?" Nick asked.

"I'll show you," Aria said as she approached one of the doors with the harpoon slung over her shoulder.

Nick followed her and watched her open the door.

As soon as the door opened, Nick only saw pure darkness.

BANG!

Aria shoved her hand forward, and the darkness was pushed back, revealing a well-lit room.

In the distance, Nick could now see a black cloak pinned against one of the walls.

When he saw that, he realized what had happened.

The room hadn't been dark.

It had been the cloak that had essentially pressed itself against the employee entrance, making it seem like the room was dark.

Nick imagined the floating black cloak waiting in front of the entrance to ambush anyone who was foolish enough to enter.

The cloak was over three meters long, and it also had two sleeves that were two meters long. On its top was a black hood, which surprisingly had normal proportions.

Naturally, nobody was wearing the cloak.

As Nick looked into the cloak, he felt like he was looking at the blackest thing that existed.

It seemed to contain an eternity of darkness.

And in a way, that was right.

Any person that touched the Fiend of Darkness would vanish, and the Fiend of Darkness did not grow when that happened.

This was important since that meant that the Fiend of Darkness was most likely not containing the person inside of itself.

Instead, it most likely transported the person somewhere.

In a way, the Fiend of Darkness was essentially a very fast and aggressive portal, and touching it meant death.

Fighting against it was very different from fighting normal Specters.

"It doesn't have intelligence and always attacks the Extractors," Aria said. "I have to stay here to contain it."

Aria kept pointing her hand at the Fiend of Darkness, which was pushed against the wall.

"It's important to keep it pinned in one spot. If it moves even a little bit, you won't be able to get back," she said.

"How come?" Nick asked.

"We are not entirely sure where the Fiend of Darkness leads to since it's impossible to perceive your surroundings inside, but we know that the entrance point moves when the Fiend of Darkness moves," Aria explained.

Nick understood what she meant.

One only needed to imagine two portals in two different locations.

If one of them moved to the left, the other one might move to the right.

If one of them moved upward, the other one might move downward.

The way the Fiend of Darkness actually stopped people from escaping was by simply pushing them through the portal and then moving the portal away.

Since the portal and the surroundings were the darkest black, it was impossible to sense the portal from the other side.

Once someone lost the location of the portal, it was impossible to find it again.

The next moment, Aria took hold of the harpoon and readied it.

BANG!

She threw the harpoon at the Fiend of Darkness, the rope rapidly gliding through her fingers.

The harpoon vanished in the Fiend of Darkness.

CRRR!

Aria clenched her fingers, and the rope stopped moving.

Then, she slowly let go of the rope, and it surprisingly continued going into the Fiend of Darkness.

It looked almost like the Fiend of Darkness was pulling the rope into itself!

"The orientation inside it is different," Aria explained as she slowly gave the harpoon more and more rope. "If it is pinned against the wall like this, it is pointing downwards in the other location. It's not pulling on the rope. Gravity is."

Nick nodded in understanding and waited.

A moment later, Aria raised an eyebrow, and she pulled a bit on the rope.

After moving it back and forth a bit, she nodded.

"It's touching the bottom," she said before looking at Nick. "You can go in now, but you have to keep one thing in mind."

"You can only come back by either climbing up the rope or holding onto it and pulling on it, in which case I will pull you out with the rope."

"Even though the rope is white, you won't be able to see it inside since any kind of light immediately vanishes. This means you have to keep hold of the rope for the entire time."

"If you let go of it, you won't be able to find it again under the Nightmare's influence. Do you understand?" she asked.

Nick looked at the Fiend of Darkness and nodded.

"Good," Aria said. "How long should I wait until I can be sure that you are dead?"

Nick furrowed his brows.

"Six hours," he said.

Aria rolled her eyes.

Six hours?

It would be surprising if anyone survived six minutes under the Nightmare's indescribable torture.

The darker it was, the stronger the Nightmare's influence was, and the area behind the Fiend of Darkness was probably the darkest place in the world.

"If it's that long, there's another thing I have to tell you," Aria said.

Nick raised an eyebrow.

"There's no oxygen in there. If you plan to be in there for hours, you better take a deep breath," she said.

Nick furrowed his brows.

Experts didn't need air, but he wasn't an Expert yet.

Nevertheless, keeping his breath for six hours wasn't that difficult since the vast majority of his bodily functions worked by using Zephyx.

His body barely needed any oxygen.

"Alright," Nick said.

"Then, you can enter whenever you want. I'll wait here. Just pull on the rope three times in quick succession, and I will pull you out," Aria said.

Nick nodded again and focused on the Fiend of Darkness.

He grabbed the rope Aria was holding and approached the Fiend of Darkness while keeping the rope inside his hand.

When he reached the Fiend of Darkness, he stopped and breathed deeply a couple of times.

He knew what was going to wait for him in there.

He knew that the next minutes were going to be the worst minutes of his life.

For a minute, he just waited in front of the Fiend of Darkness.

Then, he gritted his teeth and jumped in.